So when it came to portraying the late Dale Earnhardt, perhaps the most revered man in NASCAR history, Pepper knew he had his work cut out for him.

"(Earnhardt) is an American legend, and that is always thin ice," Pepper said. "And the similarities between Earnhardt and Maris ... they had extraordinary fan bases. You knew you were dealing with a very fervent opinion of who the man was, so if you strayed too far from that or didn't do your homework, you were going to hear about it."

Pepper, who earned an Emmy nomination for his portrayal of Maris in "61," plays Earnhardt from ages 16 to 49 in the ESPN biopic "3" that debuts tonight.

It didn't take Pepper long to realize the NASCAR nation of Earnhardt fans would not tolerate a hokey racing movie about the man known as "The Intimidator."

The racing community largely has rejected most movies about the sport as exaggerations and unrealistic, including the commercially successful Tom Cruise film "Days of Thunder."

So when Pepper arrived in North Carolina, where filming took place in the Charlotte area and Earnhardt's hometown of Kannapolis, fans made it clear they wanted Pepper to get it right.

"People came up to me with all these stories, 'I went to school with him, I worked at the mill with him,'" said Pepper, who was also a co-executive producer. "I'm sure it drove (director) Russell (Mulcahy) crazy, but I'd come up to him and say, 'You know what, I just talked to this guy who lived down the street from Dale ...'"

It wasn't easy work for Pepper, a NASCAR outsider.

"I was taken to school from the moment I got there," he said.

After attending his first race, he was hooked. Then he went to driving school to learn how to do the race scenes. And he spent hours each day being transformed into Earnhardt with the help of Stefan Dupuis, an Oscar-winning makeup artist.

Aided by facial prosthetics and hairpieces, Pepper bears a striking resemblance to Earnhardt in a movie focused on telling the story of the son of a mill worker who grew up to become one of the greatest racers.

"We never planned on going any other way than the personal story because so much of the commercialization of Dale is out there," said ESPN's Mark Shapiro. "It isn't just legend, it is very tangible, and we really wanted to get underneath to the man behind the legend - what drove him, where did he come from and how long was his road to get there."

The first half of the movie shows Earnhardt trying to please his father, Ralph, who quit his job in a Kannapolis textile mill to chase his own racing dream.

Young Dale is determined to follow in his father's footsteps, quitting school and his job at his mill, and ruining two marriages because of his commitment to racing.

The movie chronicles Earnhardt finding success on the short tracks of the Carolinas, and getting his chance to drive a Winston Cup car - the break that took him out of the mills for good and put him on the road to seven NASCAR championships.